Blue Balls: You're Wrong About Them

Science Vs

Spotify Studios

Education, Science, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 12.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We join forces with Sarah Marshall from You’re Wrong About to dive into a question for the ages: Blue balls — are they real? We’ve heard that for people with balls, if you get aroused but don’t ejaculate, it can be incredibly painful. But is that true? Or is it a ball-faced lie, something that men make up to pressure women to have sex with them? Join us for a ball-busting episode that puts blue balls to the ultimate test-es, reaching a gripping conclusion as we ask: If blue balls is in fact real — can people with vaginas get it too? Our guests include Sam Pierstorff, Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, Professor Caroline Pukall and Dr. Jonathan Chalett. Our transcript is here: https://bit.ly/3uQsujH This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman with help from Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, Meryl Horn, Nick DelRose, Michelle Dang and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and Bumi Hidaka. A huge thanks to all the experts we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr Gordon Muir, Dr Michael Leapman, Dr Karan Rangarajan, Dr Randal Rockney, Dr Nan Wise, and Dr Kevin Gandhi. And a big big thanks to Eric Mennel, Ayo Oti, Andrea Scott, Jack Weinstein, the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet.
0:03.7	Today on the show, we're hitting facts against the family jewels.
0:09.7	As we tackle, blue balls.
0:12.6	Are they real?
0:14.0	Blue balls is this idea that people can get an awful pain in their balls if they get
0:23.4	aroused but don't then ejaculate.
0:26.3	And it's been around for a really long time.
0:29.2	But a couple of months ago, TikTok kind of blew up when this guy said that blue balls
0:34.6	aren't real.
0:35.6	But it's something that men make up to pressure women to have sex with them.
0:40.2	And we on the show were like, huh.
0:45.1	How many people think this that blue balls is a total scam?
0:50.8	And could they be right?
0:53.3	So we did a survey of you, our listeners, more than 2,200 responded.
0:59.4	And more than half of the people with penises, who we figured should know about blue balls,
1:06.2	said that they either didn't think blue balls was real or they weren't sure.
1:12.7	On top of that, around 40% of those with vaginas said that they had been pressured to do something
1:17.8	sexual because of their partners so-called fear of blue balls.
1:23.2	One listener said that she'd been called a tease.
1:25.4	Others said they were made to feel really guilty about not making their partners ejaculate.
1:29.8	So what is going on here?
1:35.2	Well once we dove into this, we kind of surprisingly discovered this huge medical mystery.
	...

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